Snow White
by Sachita
Summary: And so, with burning jealousy in his heart, he can only watch as Snow White falls for the devil. TRMM.


_Hi! Don't ask me where this one comes from because I really don't know- the inspiration for this struck me today. Please tell me what you think about it._

_Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters mentioned. No copyright infringement intended._

_-Sachita (=_

_P.S.: If you are unfamiliar with the story of Snow White- Wikipedia has a very good article about it. Basically it is about a princess whose stepmother repeatedly tries to kill her, the last time with a poisoned apple (=_

_The narrator of this story is an admirer of Minerva, though we never learn his name.  
_

* * *

**Snow White**

*****  
**

Her lips are as red as an apple and her black hair is gathered in a long, elegant braid, which softly falls down her back and is adorned with a silky blue ribbon. The braid would look silly or even old-fashioned on any other girl, but she is not any other girl. She wears the braid with pride like an old woman wears the lines of life that mark her wisdom in her face.

"Minerva," he calls and she turns to look at him with those green eyes, as cool as Scotland's hills on a rainy November day. She always looks at him that way and he wishes it were different because he knows that her eyes can look like a sunny spring day, too, but that look is not reserved for his person.

It's reserved for _him_.

"Minerva," he repeats and tries to swallow the bitterness that rises up in him, but before he can hold it back it spills over his lips, like an overflowing cup of tea, and it soaks his words until they are dripping with the acid of his anguish: "Where did you stumble across this braid ? In your grandmother's hairdo books?" The look that she gives him is full of hate- green bottomless pits of anger- but before she can speak up another voice cuts in.

"Be careful what you say, Mudblood."

He'd rather like to stuff the words back in the conceited idiot's mouth but that would be foolhardy for the boy opposite of him is the epitome of popularity at the whole school. Yet he is reminded of a snake whenever he sees him; it is not so much in his looks- of course he is very handsome with his hair as sleek and black as a raven's feathers and his eyes as blue as the ocean on a winter day- but rather in the way he is like around the teachers , the way he talks with that slithery elegance and the way he smirks- cold, calculating. It never reaches his eyes. He wonders why Minerva doesn't see it.

Due to aforementioned reflections and the fact that he is not carrying the bronze eagle flying alone in its vast blue realm on his chest for nothing, he holds his tongue and wisely remains silent. _He _just snarls at him and turns away, one arm put around Minerva's waist. It takes all of his might not to wrench _his_ arm away from the white fabric of her dress.

Instead he watches how they dance: she, his Minerva- also he knows that she would never approve of him calling her "his Minerva"- and _him_. They twirl around the dance floor. It's an elegant dance and he knows that everyone has stopped to admire them because they look as graceful as two swans sailing under bright stars on a placid lake. But it is a deception for _he _is no swan; already he can see the snake uncoiling to choke the swan, to pull her down with _him_.

And it strikes him just how much she reminds him of a character from a Muggle children book this time, as she sways along to the tune in the candle-lit pavilion that is adorned with wreaths made of roses. A perfectly romantic atmosphere if it were not for the fact that she has skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony. Of course she is accompanied by the sly devil, clad in dark robes and as suave as any devil in any children's story.

He can't watch this anymore. Instead he makes a step, and another one, intent on reaching her and wrenching her away from temptation itself, but then he sees how she allows her lips to be captured in a kiss that might look tender from the outside, but really is not, for he knows that Snow White has eaten the apple and there is no way to save her.

And as he stands there, amidst the dancing couples, half-way to her whilst she is being hidden from view by twirling skirts - and he can hear her joyous laughter from where he is standing – in that very moment he knows that he will, as long as he lives, hate one Tom Riddle.

* * *

It's fifty years later and lives have been lived, he has a family , children who are adults themselves, and the waves and tides of life have passed over him, leaving him not unscathed.

But they have not left her unscathed her either. She wears her hair in a graying long braid, that nearly reaches her waist and one might say that it is old-fashioned, but she wears it with pride like a young girl wears her first ear-rings, her first attempt to adapt to the adults' world.

What he really wants to say is : "I am sorry, Minerva."

But again, he cannot hold back the words, even after so many years he cannot hold back the words that want to come, and they spill over his lips like golden droplets of honey:

"The braid looks very good on you, Minerva."

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End file.
